Problems with the cursor skipping on Dell Laptops

I haven't been able to get my hands on the laptop myself, but my girlfriend's cousin is having a problem with his Dell laptop where when you type something out fairly fast the mouse cursor skips around erratically, making it impossible to type anything at all. This isn't the first person I've heard have this problem, and after a quick google search there are alot of people with this problem. Dell's support website requires a membership, so they are no help.

Anyone know of a fix for it that I can pass along?

Is he using a mouse or the digital pad? If it's the pad, the insides might be dirty and causing shit to bounce around under it and making the mouse move erradically...

He's using the touchpad. I'm hoping that I can get my hands on the laptop and see if I can mess with it. Thing is, although he's had his for a while, I've heard of it happening to brand new dells too.

Oh... It's probably either dust on the inside or a wire is getting crossed somewhere. Tell him to buy a serial mouse, you can get those for like 30 cents nowadays. He can use his leg as a mousepad if he uses the computer in class.

My intellimouse does kind of the same thing... sometimes it'll go berserk and move all over the screen, trying to delete every file the mouse moves over. I've attributed this to a pulled wire in the cord, so if I move the cord a specific way it'll fritz out on me.

My Inspiron 3800 has always had that problem. It rarely happens, though. Plus you can always get a serial mouse as cka suggested.